1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a document processor, a document processing method and a document processing program, and more particularly to a document processor having a function of attaching additional information to an electronic document and a function of associating link information with the additional information, a document processing method in the document processor, and a document processing program that is executed in the document processor.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, there are a number of techniques for supporting the cooperative preparation of a document, such as the preparation of a device design or a device manual.
First, there is a technique in which an update time for information in a document file is stored in advance, and when the information is read out of the document file, a judgment is made as to whether or not the information has been updated since a user last referred to the update time. The updated information is then identifiably displayed according to the judgment (for example, refer to Japanese Published Unexamined Patent Application No. Hei 8-50590).
Also, there is a technique in which a relation between a report or document and a comment is held in an activity report, thereby making the history of activity relating to the relation between the report or document and the comment and the tracking of the comment easy. In the technique, a chain is formed, including a report group and a comment group, composed of the relationships between the various reports and comments, thereby making the extraction and use of information easy (for example, refer to Japanese Published Unexamined Patent Application No. 2001-147982).
Incidentally, in recent years, a technique has been used in which additional information such as character information, image information, sound information or link information may be attached to an arbitrary position within an electronic document without effecting the body of the electronic document. In the present specification, the additional information may also be referred to as an “annotation”.
A system that allows an annotation to be attached to an electronic document is exemplified by DocuWorks (registered trademark) of Fuji Xerox Co., Ltd. or Acrobat (registered trademark) of U.S. Adobe Corporation.
However, according to the technique that identifiably displays the updated document information, although an updated document can be accessed, the linked information is not taken into consideration. Therefore, there arises such a problem that the user cannot access whether the state of the linked information has changed since the last time it was referred to.
Similarly, according to the technique in which the relation between a report and a comment is held in an activity report, the comment is not taken into consideration when determining whether the report has been updated. Therefore, there arises such a problem that the user cannot access whether the state of the linked comment has changed from the last time it was referred to.